There is a feeling, being around Lestat. Now he's experienced it, Armand can liken it to standing on the top floor of a skyscraper and watching a thunderstorm rolling in across the desert. A lowering and rising of barometric pressures, an electricity in the air, the track of bruise-coloured clouds across the horizon. The knowledge that something great and terrible is about to happen. He found it addictive, once.

Now, though -- now.

He isn't surprised, at least not enough to show on his face. He's far too old and has had too much practice to let that happen.

"We count our days with a different measure, but that doesn't mean we deserve to spend them in a cage." He glances aside, watching Lestat's hand, acknowledging his presence in the turn of his head. Slowly, he replaces the book he's been reading. Turns, carefully, within the gravitational collapse of Lestat's personal space.

"Lestat," he greets him, polite, but with some degree of teeth to it.